A Discursive Interpretation of African Pentecostalism
Ogbu U. Kalu © 2007
1.Introduction
The literature on the explosion of Christianity in contemporary Africa has burgeoned.
The complexities are related to the fact all religions are growing. Islam as well as indigenous and
theosophic religions have blossomed to create a veritably pluralistic public space. Among the
Christians, Roman Catholicism and a wide band of Charismatic and Pentecostal groups show the
highest levels of growth. By charismatic movements we refer to the revivalist groups seeking
to express a deeper level of religious experience without leaving the mission-founded
denominations. Cephas Omenyo dubs the charismatic movement as “Pentecost outside
Pentecostalism.” Here, we shall skip the differences between those inside and those outside by
labeling both as Pentecostals. The statistical data are often hard to read because various sources
use different indices and categories. But the visibility of the new religious movement has
reshaped the religious landscape, and may give the wrong impression that other religious forms
are in decline. The case of Anglican Communion in Africa and especially in Nigeria point to the
fact that the Pentecostals merely heated the competition in the religious market, and their
salience must be kept in perspective.
More important is the dominant discourse in the literature about Pentecostalism in a nonWestern context. We shall use Africa as an example. The image of Pentecostalism in Africa has
been dominated by the globalism discourse. Commentators focus on how global cultural forces
have overwhelmed local identities and how the Pentecostalism in Africa originated from Azusa
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Street and is an extension of the American electronic church. Americanization appears as a dirty
epithet and symbol of the failure of African religious creativity; indeed a relapse after the
innovations of the Zionist/Aladura on the religion-culture interface. Sociologists from the 1990s
to date employ the modernity/globalization discourse to portray African Pentecostalism as a
movement that originated from and has been developed by external change agents, and
dependent on transnational networks. This lacks a long historical perspective, focuses on the
contemporary urban contexts, and ignores the rural communities and the socio-cultural
processes.
At issue are certain nuances that need to be neatly picked out: modernity has long
confronted African cultures through the missionary enterprise. The question is the resilience of
African religions and how they responded to new religions such as Christianity, Islam and others.
Receptivity has sometimes been mistaken for conversion to Christianity because the colonial
governments used civilization as an index of conversion. Christian missionary enterprise was not
only ineluctably locked into the civilization project but the concepts of modernity and
civilization were often used interchangeably. Within this discourse, indigenization is postured as
anti-modernity as if, instead of rupture or break with the past, the effort was to re-insert the
primal culture into the modern religious and political spaces. Thus, Pentecostalism is imaged as
fundamentalist and as anti-modernists. (see, Paul Gifford, 1991,1992,1994, 1998, 2004). In
pursuit of the modernity paradigm, some scholars have recognized that there are two sides to the
matter: the global processes and local identities, the insertion of a religious culture and the modes
of appropriation.
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Therefore, there have been two dominant approaches to the relationship between global
processes and local identities, especially how African Pentecostalism fits into the globalization
model: the first focuses on the geographical expansion of the phenomenon and varied
expressions in different cultures. In Dempster (1999), the subtitle imaged Pentecostalism as a
religion “made to travel” and Ruth Marshall-Fratani (1998:276-315) preferred to emphasize the
transnational character of the movement. (see, subtitles of Anderson and Hollenweger,1999;
Corten and M-Fratani,2001). This approach avoids a homogenous characterization and instead
shows how varied socio-cultural and political milieux “set to work” certain basic Christian
affirmations. As Anderson observed, “the Pentecostal emphasis on ‘ freedom in the Spirit’ has
rendered the movement inherently flexible in different cultural and social contexts.” (1999:221)
A second strand takes its cue from Marshall MacLuhan’s concept of the global village and
perceives the emergence of a global culture driven by the force of commerce and technology. It
is argued that this force, comprising of ideas and material culture arising from the West, are daily
exported into various parts of the world. Its effect is to overawe local cultures and identities and
to install a shared global culture. Thus, in different regions, the Pentecostals imitate Westerners
and speak in a new global lingua franca, English.
Pentecostal and charismatic religiosity is imaged as a vehicle in this enterprise. The
creativity of Africans in the Pentecostal explosion is queried. Rebuttals abound but are beyond
the scope here.(see, Maxwell,2000:468-81) Suffice it to observe that cultural flows are not unidirectional; rather each cultural artifact acquires significance in each context. One of the
complexities of Pentecostalism is that there are no fixed centers, geographical, economic or even
symbolic. Heterogeneity and mutual dependence are core characteristics. Unlike the old
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missionary endeavor, there are South-South, intra-continental, as well as North-South
relationships and flows and blockages.(Hackett,1996:66-77) The effort here, therefore, posits
modernity as both a resource and challenge as people bring the gospel mandate to bear on real
issues of life and death in Africa. The real question is whether this form of religion has the
capacity to catalyze both religious and social changes and thereby imperceptibly transform the
cultural landscape of which religion is a part. As Harvey Cox would expand, “religion is the
royal road to the heart of a civilization, the clearest indicator of its hopes and terrors, the surest
index of how it is changing.” (1999:11) Therefore, a close reading of Pentecostalism takes us to
the heartbeat of the contemporary religious quest in Africa that is at once so intense, pervasive
and multi-directional.
The concern of this paper is to disengage from the modernity/globalism discourse and
focus on the modes of appropriation and how interculturality has been an enduring theme from
the inception of African encounter with Christianity. Pentecostal spirituality merely continues the
dialogue with new energy and strategies. If so, how does the African, in the local context,
understand the impact of the outburst of Pentecost within Africa, especially from the 1970s?; and
how has this reshaped the contours of the religious landscape? How, then, can the historian
construct a discourse that provides a composite image of a movement that enjoyed both
indigenous creativity and beneficial linkages to World Christianity? The paper briefly examines
four predictors for constructing a Pentecostal discourse, namely, historical, cultural,
instrumentalist, and religious. The emphasis is how culture informs religious experience and
expression.
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2. The historical discourse
The historical model provides the contextual background in time and space and the contours
ofcultural change. It takes a long view into the past to show how the movement developed
through various revivals that served as African responses to the gospel message. It says that
Africans have always sought means of restoring their battered image from slave trade and
colonialism through religious power. Thus, Africans name the movement differently. If one
asked a simple question, Who is a Pentecostal? In North America, the terminology has a specific
referent. But in Africa, many Pentecostals do not use the label. In Ghana, they call themselves
Charismatics even when they are independent of any denominations. The reason is that the
movement started as charismatic movements within mainline churches and spawned into
independent groups. In Nigeria, they are named as “born again” Christians. In Congo
Brazzaville, they refer to themselves as revival churches because the earliest forms were revival
movements within missionary institutions. Thus, the identity and historical origins are linked to
the trail of ferments or revival movements.
Africans were intensely interested in the charismatic power in the Biblical narratives.
Beyond the early manifestations such as by the The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz
Kimpa Vita (1684-1706), a number of revival movements occurred in the 19th century and
intensified significantly at the turn of the 20th century.(Thornton,1998)
Five types could be
detected: (i) a priestly figure such as Beatriz in Angola, Nxele and Ntsikana among the Xhosa,
would emerge from traditional religious cultus, after experiencing a Christian vision and urges a
religious transformation of allegiance; (ii) a prophetic figure would emerge from within the
Christian band endowed with healing powers and evangelistic ardor to quicken the pace of
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Christianization. Wade Harris and Garrick Braide are examples from West Africa; (iii) Zionists,
Abaroho and Aladura exploded under the colonial canopy and creatively appropriated the
pneumatic resources of the gospel and transformed the cultural content of Christian expression.
With time, the ceased to be separatist or independent movements and became indigenous as
schism broadened the typology. (iv)Classical Holiness and Pentecostal groups from various parts
of the Western hemisphere worked with indigenous groups to create the early Pentecostal
movements. Sometimes they were invited by indigenes, as the British Apostolic Church and
Assemblies of God into Ghana and Nigeria. At other times, revival broke out among missionfounded churches and among Holiness groups. From the inter-war years this phenomenon
became prominent. Just to name a few: the Ibibio Revival in southeastern Nigeria occurred
among the Qua Iboe Mission in 1927. The same year in Western Kenya, a revival flared up
among the Quakers. In 1930, the Balokole movement among the Anglicans swept from Rwanda
through Uganda to Kenya and Tanzania. In 1947, revivalism occurred within the Swedish Free
Church in Congo Brazzaville. (v) In the 1970’s youthful charismatism sprouted all over Africa.
Labeled as aliliiki in Malawi, these puritan young preachers catalyzed the modern Pentecostal
movement, thus giving it a different stamp from pervious genres.
The point should be made that missionaries went out from among Holiness and early
Pentecostals groups; that evangelism was core to the self-understanding of these groups; and the
emphasis on xenolalia was directly related to its capacity for generating rapid missionary
enterprises. Some missionaries went solo, others were sponsored by a group, and efforts were
made to mobilize a number of Pentecostals into a joint missionary organization in 1910.It failed
in the United States and had a modest success in Britain. In many African countries, Classical
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Pentecostal missions remained inconspicuous in the religious terrains dominated by Protestant
and Catholic churches till the outbreak of youthful charismatism in the 1970s.The indigenous
roots of Pentecostalism in Africa must be underscored as manifestations of indigenous
appropriation of the translated gospel and response to missionary message. Most Classical
Pentecostal missionaries were invited and came to fully functional indigenous Pentecostal groups
embattled in a hostile colonial environment. Adrian Hastings concludes that
“mass conversion movements were not set off by missionaries but by a concatenation of
circumstances within African societies, at once buffeted by the new pressures of
colonialism and enlightened by African ‘evangelists’ of one sort or another who were
able to mediate just sufficient of Christian wisdom to be understood and effective for the
masses.” (1994:531)
Even in the Southern African setting, Zionism antedated the arrival of J.G. Lake, racial
segregation soon ruined the ecumenicity within the Apostolic Church, and the spread of the
movement into Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique was mainly through mine workers. The
development in the post-colonial era further indicated that Christianity grew in Africa more
rapidly under indigenous agency and after the missionary era. The other key factor is that the
character of Pentecostalism changed in every decade thereafter: the puritan and evangelistic
tradition of the 1970s gave way to faith and claim, prosperity ministry of the 1980s. By the
1990s, the movement was recalled to the holiness tradition, intercession, and engagement with
the public space. (Kalu,2000, Mission Studies,20,2003:84-111)
One key aspect of the historical discourse is the relationship between Pentecostals and
African Initiated Churches. Some have portrayed the AICs as the original Pentecostal movement
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in Africa. Harvey Cox’s Fire from Heaven consolidates the view that could be traced back to
H.W Turner, J.W Hollenweger and Allan Anderson. Two positions have, therefore, emerged in
African Church historiography: those who lay emphasis on the shared worldview tend to
emphasize the elements of continuity. They portray the Aladura as the roots of modern
Pentecostalism in Africa, or indeed, an earlier form of it. The implication is to posture the roots
of Pentecostalism in Africa within the religious genius of the indigenous people. Within this
camp, however, some arrive at the same conclusion through the prism of comparative religions.
Employing the phenomenological approach, they emphasize common elements in all religions.
Stepping outside the compounds of those who see all religious forms as the different roads to
Rome or the colors of the rainbow, one engages about six advocacies linking the Aladura and the
Pentecostals, based on

the pneumatic emphasis (Turner, 1965; Hollenweger 1972; Hackett, 1987,1989;
Anderson, 1990,1996),

new religiosity (Hollenweger, 1986),

linked roots in historical discourse of origins (Poewe, 1988; Oosthuizen, 1997;
Hollenweger, 1997),

kindred atmosphere or shared worldview ( Bediako, 1995; Walls, 1996),

racial ideology (Hollenweger, 1974; Tinney, 1980; Poewe, 1988) and

the re-integrative response to social predicament (Daneel, 1990; Oosthuizen, 1997).
These are representative nodes in the historiography and selected to balance the data from the
South and the West of Africa. Comparative religious approach privileges inclusivism and
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religious pluralism. But insider perspectives clash with outsider perspectives. Moreover, the
proper use of typology could create order out of chaos.
AICs reject the Pentecostal label and the Pentecostals demonize the AICs by deploying
theological weapons derived from covenantal theology. They argue that the AICs covenant with
spiritual forces in indigenous religions. They emphasize that many the rituals in AIC
communities are opposed to covenant with Jesus Christ. Each covenant is binding and
determines the destiny of human beings and communities. Christian life is imaged as a powerencounter, a spiritual battle, requiring a certain attitude towards the spirits at the gates of
communities; they caution members to be wary and to test the spirits, for not all are of God. This
perception tends to emphasize the elements of discontinuity with the past as Birgit Meyer has
concluded from her study of the Ewe of Ghana. The complexity in Pentecostal attitude to the
past is that while it affirms the reality of the spiritual world in the African map of the universe,
there is a parallel tearing of the of the local fabric which undermines the structure of ancestral
power, witchcraft, and familial coercion. (Martin,2002:148) In general, Pentecostals perceive
themselves differently from the AICs even though historically some AICs started from mainline
churches and others emerged from Pentecostal roots before splintering into groups that knew
little about their origins.
The contested areas are, therefore,(a) modes of receiving and transmitting spiritual
power-dreams, visions, laying of hands, anointing with oil, prophetic speaking and intuition or
the still small voice; (b)crisis control-discernment, diagnosis, cleansing, deliverance and healing;
(c)rituals of rejuvenation, re-covenanting and re-enchanting the world-ancestral cults, festivals
(especially agricultural); (d) empowerment rituals- for life force, tangible material things such as
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goods and wealth and intangibles such as status and power. Space constrains a detailed
discussion of these weighty matters. (see Turner’s typology, 1967:1-33) In South Africa the
connection between Zionists and Azusa Street through J.G Lake is unique. In West Africa, some
of the mega Pentecostal churches (eg. True Redeemed Evangelical Mission, Lagos, Redeemed
Christian Church of God, Lagos) started life within the AIC. In recent times, many AICs are
shunning instruments in their rituals to qualify fully as Pentecostal. (see,
Kalu,Missionalia,28,2000:121-142)
3. The cultural discourse
The cultural discourse argues that African Pentecostalism must be understood from the
indigenous worldviews; that it answers questions raised from the interior of various African
worldviews. The globalization discourse utilizes the Western enlightenment worldview and
misses many of the nuances: the millions who throng to stadia are not necessarily the upper
mobile class seeking the resources of global cultural flow; they may be millions who have heard
about a form of Christianity that takes seriously the fears and hopes emanating from the interior
of their primal worldview; a religion that serves better the goals of traditional African religion.
The historian must perforce construct the Pentecostal discourse by first reconstructing the
indigenous worldview and pursue the lines of continuity between the Biblical and the indigenous
African worlds. The major contribution of the movement is how they address the continued
reality of the forces expressed in African cultural forms. Contrary to the early missionary attitude
that urged rejection, Pentecostals take the African map of the universe seriously, acknowledging
that culture is both a redemptive gift as well as capable of being high-jacked. They perceive a
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kindred atmosphere and resonance with the worldview of the Bible. They appreciate the tensile
strength of the spiritual ecology in Africa and the clash of covenants in the effort to displace the
spirits at the gates of individuals and communities with a legitimate spiritual authority. Salvation
is posed in a conflict scenario. The Garrick Braide missionaries reflected this in a simple chorus
that declared that “Jesus has come and Satan has run away!” Pentecostals, therefore, explore the
lines of congruence that go beyond deconstruction to a new construction of reality.
First, at the structural level, African and biblical worldviews share the cyclical perception
of time though the New Testament also contains a linear perception of time. They share a threedimensional space: the heavenlies, earth (land and water) or in the earth-beneath (ancestral
world). Second, both subject manifest events to supernatural causation affirming that “things
which are seen are made of things which are not seen’(Heb. 11:3b) and that conflicts in the
manifest world are first decided in the spirit world, therefore, ‘the weapons of our warfare are not
carnal”. Third, the biblical worldview is that life is just as precarious as the traditional African
imagines; the enemy is ranged in a military formation as principalities, powers, rulers of
darkness and wickedness in high places. The Pentecostal goes through life as keenly aware of the
presence of evil forces as the African does. Fourth, evil forces are ubiquitous and possess people
and confer false authority. Satan even promised Jesus some of these if he complied. Thus,
Pentecostals perceive dictatorial and corrupt rulers as being “possessed”. Fifth, the Pentecostal
perceives witchcraft and sorcery as real, soul-to-soul attack. The born again Christian responds
to deliverance ministries because witchcraft and demonic oppression are taken seriously by
Pentecostal preachers and to prosperity preaching because these are the reasons for visiting the
native doctor or the Aladura prophet. Thus, the elements of African Pentecostalism that are
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strange to the Westerner could be explained from the cultural discourse. (Kalu, Pneuma, 24,2,
2002:110-137) More cogent, Pentecostal liturgy is a key attraction and borrows heavily from
indigenous culture.
4. The instrumentalist discourse
The instrumentalist genre of discourse has been promoted mostly by social scientists. It
focuses on core aspects of social structures, arguing that Africans patronize Pentecostalism as an
instrument to respond to their socio-economic and political challenges of their environment
riddled with poverty, failed economies and legitimacy crises. Pentecostalism is growing in the
poorer regions of the world where every one wants to imitate the West, read Western books,
wear western clothes and mimic American pronunciation of English language. The deficit model
could sometimes yield contradictory conclusions. It has buttresses the argument for externality,
images Pentecostalism as an urban phenomenon that serves as a vehicle of cultural flows; a
religion that appeals to the urban, highly mobile middle class questing for the resources of
modernity, and as a coping mechanism for the urban dweller confronted with anomie and harsh
realities of unemployment. It combines class analysis with the social, economic and political;
that it provides a safe haven for single women; provides social security and social network that
has immense economic import; empowers the urban poor; serves as a tool of hope.
One key assumption is that most Africans live in urban areas, that the pace of
urbanization is increasing as megapoles emerge creating a magnetic pull from the dwindling
rural areas. These urban dwellers whether in rich or poor slums sectors constitute the target of
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Pentecostal evangelization, the consumers of its core message, the determinant of the strategies
that have become increasingly market-oriented. Urban contexts are the veritable field where
global economic and cultural forces are replicated. They are the communities wired with fiberoptic technology, and exposed to an ideology of free market technocracy that seeks to
denationalize the state sovereignty. From this perspective, globalism is imaged as an ineluctable
force that no African could avoid. Thus, Paul Gifford’s book on Ghana’s New Christianity, has
the sub-title, Pentecostalism in a globalizing African economy.(2004) It is as if globalization is
the most urgent dimension to this African nation, and that it is essential to understand a religious
phenomenon prominently from the perspective of its function in promoting this ideology. This
trend has produced studies that focus on mega churches that serve as ‘McDonalization’ of the
gospel. The organization and strategies of mega churches are portrayed as replications of western
corporate models and, therefore, reductionist of the essential gospel and betrayal of national
identities. From 1998, research grants turned attention to the use of the media among African
Pentecostals. It did not pay much attention to print media or literary production by indigenous
African pastors. Rather, it focused on radio and television to show how global cultural flows
have permeated into the cultural expression of African Pentecostalism.
From here, the negative images yield to positive ones based on the innate ethos in
Pentecostalism. This replays the old connections between capitalism and Protestantism:
voluntarism, individuality, frugal morality, hard work, adaptability, discontinuity with the
burdens of the past (ancestral, extended family, indigenous community, wasteful rituals of
indigenous religions, taboos/prohibitions and such-like). The argument links social, economic
political and psychological dimensions of Pentecostal thought and practices.
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On the social front, it points to the fact that Pentecostal movements provide social
security, social network, reinvent communality in urban anomies by recovering the notion of
brethren as a community that resonates with Biblical concepts of koinonia and soma. This leads
to the psychological impact that argues that Pentecostal communities serve as safe havens that
empower people to cope, provide emotional security because religion can function as a psychoaffective response to socio-economic forces; their liturgies (prayer, retreats, tarrying, music,
dance, homilectics, and testimonies), provide healing catharsis, and their hermeneutics perfumed
with Biblical certitudes transform the inner person. On the gender front, women enjoy an
enlarged space for exercising ritual power, engage in safe quest for spouses in a religious
atmosphere that privileges family values. These dimensions flow into the economic gains
because the people are empowered to engage the modern economic space and technologies, to
operate with optimism that God is with them in the market place, to reject defeat from economic
failures of the nation or the domestic impact of the World Banks’ Structural Adjustment
Programs.
Here commentators differ: some argue that prosperity and faith-claim theology breed
dependency and weakness as people expect miracles and do not work hard. Others image a band
of energetic businessmen using the gospel as a weapon in their struggles to be head and not tails,
and to tithe because of the law of sowing and reaping. The old suspicion that this is an apolitical
religion survives. The argument is that by over-emphasizing the salvation of the individual,
inadequate attention is paid to a political theology that engages structural evil; that cause
poverty, denies human rights and diminish the power to be truly human. Pentecostal
congregations lack a consciousness of political activism. In some cases as in Kenya and Ghana,
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Pentecostals colluded with dictatorial governments. Analyses diverge as some distinguish covert
from overt political engagements. Intercession could serve as political praxis, and communities
could imagine a counter political culture that fights against the debilitating force of ethnicity,
seeks the welfare of the nation, of the continent and the entire black race. At this infra-political
level, a criticism of the government is reflected in the liturgy and social programs. However,
many Pentecostals tend to demonize Islam, promote Zionism and, therefore, do not theologize on
the pluralistic character of the modern public space.
Contemporary Pentecostalism in Africa neither possesses the infrastructure, relationship
with governments, nor the ideology to serve as the religious dimension of capitalism. There is no
denying, however, that Pentecostalism thrives in urban areas and assists individuals to cope with
the requirements of surviving in such an environment. In many countries, it has spread rapidly
into rural areas as the periphery is connected to the new centers. Also, in its worldview,
Pentecostalism shares the global ideal of dissolving ethnic boundaries and transnational
boundaries among the black race. It seeks the freedom to baptize all nationals with the gospel in
obedience to the Great Command. As David Martin subtitles his book, Pentecostalism: The
World Their Parish (2002). Evangelism remained at the core of the movement from its inception.
Indeed, the emphasis on tongues was as an aid to mission.
But here is the irony: globalization has caused the socio-economic challenges that
concern Pentecostals. Dual economies, the lack of equity in distribution of wealth means that
Pentecostalism faces the backdrop of poverty and inequality. The economic prescriptions of the
IMF have created oases of wealth in the desert of scorching poverty, class conflicts, legitimacy
crises and stunned populations. The appeal of this religiosity to the poor has been the concern of
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many commentators. It would appear that some accuse Pentecostalism for purveying
globalisation, others accuse them for not fighting the trend; some allege that they do not assist
their nations to globalize, others point to the vast social services provided by Pentecostals under
the radar. It is a Catch-22 wrench. In Africa, most people live in rural areas; most urban dwellers
preserve their roots in the villages; globalism discourse in this context is unsatisfactory because
global cultural flows have not fully eroded local identities. Communicators tell us that the
decoder hears differently from the best intentions of the encoder. The hearer is not passive but
selects, rearranges to suit urgent needs. The patterns of appropriation reflect the problems raised
in the interior of indigenous worldviews. One evidence is the growth of vernacular videos as a
tool of Pentecostal evangelization.
5. The Religious discourse
Two broad models underlie this discourse and emphasize how religion reinvents daily life
and culture and how it does so by utilizing signals of transcendence in the sphere of human
existence. It draws on notions of the relationship between the transcendental and daily life which
have been articulated by Peter Berger in A Rumour of Angels (1970) because he predicted the
recovery of the transcendence by modern society, by Harvey Cox, Fire From Heaven (1995)
whose interest is how Pentecostalism is reshaping religion in the 21st century and Waldo Cesar,
Daily Life and Transcendency in Pentecostalism (1999). Each draws attention to the limits of
Enlightenment critique of religion and the obstinate resilience, rebirth and resurgence of religion
into the public space (Haynes,1996). Waldo Cesar uses data from Latin America to deal with the
force of a theological concept in understanding and responding to “new religious needs”; how
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the kerygma, in its confession, teaching and preaching becomes a tool of hope to the poor in
spirit and material well-being.
The contention is that religion needs to be examined as a central category of cultural
practice in which lived lives embody an evolving religious understanding of the ultimate
meaning of life. Sociologists of religion may miss the driving force of religious power in
religious movements by paying too much attention to functions of such movements in social
structures. In all these, culture is the contested space. The weal and woe of any religious
phenomenon depends on how it meets the challenges embedded in the ecosystem because
cultures are hewn from the rock of a community’s efforts towards sustainability. The explosion
of Pentecostalism has provoked an enormous upheaval in the African religious field and has
acquired a great visibility within a short period, both in urban and rural areas. The evangelistic
drive in the movement has increased its presence in the rural areas. This compels a revisit to the
religious discourse. The ordinary Pentecostal in Africa may be less concerned with modernity
and globalization and more about a renewed relationship with God, intimacy with the
transcendental, empowerment by the Holy Spirit and protection by the power in the blood of
Jesus as the person struggles to eke out a viable life in a hostile environment. It could be that
they enjoy a certain “moral innocence of the global economy.” (van Dijk,1997) As Harri
Englund concludes in his study of Malawi,
“most Christians in Chisanpo are too poor and too unfamiliar with English to detach
themselves from their immediate relationships in the township and country;…the stuff of
their Pentecostal lives is their personal relationships.” (Corten and Marshall-Fratani,
2001:254)
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This raises the question: how is Pentecostalism in Africa a force engaged in the religionization of
cultures, at institutional and personal domains, or in the process, has been reshaped by cultures?
This reflection suggests seven areas that could illustrate the salience of the movement in
reshaping cultures and religious landscapes: re-invention of self and life journey, daily life in the
domestic domain, arts and aesthetics, communication, the individual and community at the social
domain, religious life and public space. The treatment of these must perforce be constrained by
space since some of these are large issues of significance. It is germane that a typology should
indicate how the various strands of the movement have privileged certain ‘apostolates’ or
ministries: deliverance, evangelism, bible distribution, children evangelism, cross-cultural
evangelization, prosperity and poverty and intercession. Some are fellowships that charismatize
mainline churches and enable Classical Pentecostal denominations to grow. The import of
reverse flow or African Pentecostal presence in Europe and Asia has received much attention.
(van Dijk,1997:135-60;ter Haar, 1998)
Pentecostalism in Africa is the old evangelicalism writ large laying emphasis on the
bible, cross, conversion, social activism and eschatology. It challenges the mainline churches
from inside, less from any deep theological revision and more by affirming the bible’s reality as
a guide for daily living. This wave could be described as “setting to work” of the message of
missionaries but at the same time recovering those pneumatic elements which had been
saccharined out by liberal theology in its tango with Enlightenment worldview. Baptism of the
Holy Spirit, experience, emotion, radical transformation of self through rupture with a sinful
past, possibility of self-integration, exuberant hope for a new future, the healing and empowering
resources of the charismata soon led to imagining the transformation of human conditions and
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structures. An exploration of the symbols and discourse within the movement would betray the
impact of religious power in the re-imagination and re-invention of daily life and reality. Since
the reigning theology was constructed and hedged with certitudes, these born again people
believe that it could be deconstructed. Using the bible they de-regulate the inherited polity and
rituals of missionary Christianity. In spite of the eclectic character, these “born again” people
share certain basic affirmations and style and have created a network among the “brethren”
across the many geographical, class and gender boundaries. The core of the new experience is
that it re-defines personality and reinvents identity as the born again person develops a new
vision, life goals and ethics which constitute a rupture from a sinful past.
The impact can be illustrated from certain aspects of domestic domain. First, the person
develops a new attitude to living and is supposed to enjoy and celebrate life under the assurance
of being under God’s control. An upbeat mood, anti-depressant, power-packed optimism,
positive thinking and affirmation should create moral balance, emotive mastery of the natural
world and a protection against forces that threaten life. It provides an inner power to survive the
anxieties, unease, destabilization and crises of modern Africa. It replaces the loss of efficacy of
other religious options; it aids the satisfaction of new needs; it is a theology of life that engenders
upward mobility in life activities because prosperity is predicated on the quality of inner life.
Secondly, the transformation of life- style should manifest in body care, health and well-being.
Rebirth offers a release from the forces that dominated one’s past as the Holy Spirit flows
through from the pneuma into the psuche and soma with power to re-establish the proper
relationship and control of God. This is redemption. (see, Anderson, 1990; Daneel, 1990;
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Meyer, 1995; Hill, 1996) But since sanctification is a process, life journey becomes a pilgrimage
towards an increased control of daily life by the power of the Holy Spirit.
One cares for the body because it is the temple of God; therefore, consumption of
alcohol, tobacco and harmful substances are imaged as pollution of the temple. Daily exercise is
imbued with religious rationale. Health embraces the physical, material and psychological. It is
also relational requiring good neighborliness, attention to family and other social relations. The
tendency to emphasize individualization is balanced with a concern for social obligations that
would not implicate the born again in traditional religious rituals. The new life involves a moral
rigor in maintaining Godly covenants while keeping a safe distance from covenants with the
gods of the fathers. An African proverb asserts that one does not grow taller than the umbilical
cord; so, one does not abandon the roots in the family, village and clan. These must be
evangelized and cleansed to ensure ability to perform in the spiritual warfare. One cannot owe
the enemy or have a link in the enemy’s camp and still fight against it.
The reinvention of the self and identity could be further illustrated with two key cultural
ingredients of the domestic domain, namely, love and marriage, work and money. A certain
ambiguity towards the body reinforces the purity ethics about sexual relationships. There is a
certain diatribe about the pervasive force of “jezebellian” spirit, connected with water in Africa
(marine spirits) that induces sexual promiscuity; that this spirit is reinforced with fertility rituals
in both the rites of passage and in festivals of the agricultural cycle. Pentecostals reinvent the
covenant idea in the Bible to argue that communities have woven covenants with these gods and
through libations and festivals implicate every member. The task of the born again is to renounce
the covenant and avoid the festivals and any religious rituals that implicate. The next step is to
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avoid being “unequally yoked with unbelievers” by seeking love and courtship only within the
boundaries of the born again. Thus, marriage would establish a new family for Christ. It has been
argued that this strengthens the institution of the family amidst rapid social changes but it could
become an encapsulation strategy; that it offers security and opportunities to young girls and
keeps young males focused and out of trouble. It creates a wholesome environment that attracts
and this explains the numerical predominance of young people and women in Pentecostal
groups. The wider implication is that it reconstructs the social environment, provides a new
social control model and challenges traditional mores. Indeed, during betrothal, the celebrants
would usually refuse to perform the ceremony in their ancestral home and would reject libations
to ancestors so as to avoid implications in the “iniquities of the fathers.” Many of the symbols of
traditional religion such as rubbing the navel of the girl with a white chalk to ensure fertility may
be rejected. Pentecostals would rather fulfill traditional obligations with money than provide
alcoholic drinks for the elders of the family. The new ethics invite enormous conflicts with the
guardians of tradition and ancestral homesteads.
The literature has emphasized individuality in Pentecostalism; that both the message and
ethics appeal to the upwardly mobile who would want to jettison responsibilities from family and
extended family circles. A closer look betrays that the process is more of re-configuration rather
total break; one’s roots must be cleansed and brought under the moral economy of the gospel to
enhance the potentials for moving into the future. It is alleged that the failure of many “men of
God” stems from neglecting their roots. A house cannot be constructed on a poor soil or risk
collapse under testing winds. One should preach to one’s parents, siblings, extended family and
village. Innumerable outreaches are conducted in the villages of believers. The vertical growth of
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the movement in rural areas has been greatly assisted by the urban believers who took the
message home. Ruthane Garlock in Fire in His Bones emphasizes how Benson Idahosa wept
when his father, a native doctor, died unconverted during the Biafra-Nigeria Civil War (19671970) in spite of Idahosa’s pleas. His mother converted. The individual’s contentious
relationship with the community does not mean a rejection of community but perceives certain
communal rituals as hindrances to the individual’s success in the economic sphere. The ethic of
hard work is emphasized and when one’s obedience is complete, prosperity is God’s obligation
to fulfill. All hindrances from one’s roots especially idolatry must be avoided. The attraction of
the gospel of prosperity in Africa has been emphasized. Similarly, aesthetics that prefers images
of the natural world to images of the human being and that emphasizes the aniconic passages and
iconoclastic diatribe in the Biblical narrative are transferred from text to life.
A major aspect of contemporary African Pentecostalism is the re-engagement of the
political space. Paul Gifford in his recent study of Ghana’s New Christianity(2004) would
suggest that the movement does not engage adequately in attacking structural injustice. Others
have distinguished covert from overt political engagement. Intercession could be a form of
political praxis. But the data differs from region to region, from country to country. In Nigeria,
the political salience and engagement in social issues may be more extensive than in Ghana.
Collusion between Pentecostals and dictatorial governments have been canvassed without talking
due considerations of the dynamics of the political terrain. David Martin argues against the
notion of a dualistic withdrawal from political life. Rather there is
“a newly confident entry looking for social validation… The new style charismatics tend
to refer to models in the Hebrew Scriptures, sometimes with a theocratic element, and
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they entertain a tincture of Christian Zionism such as also exists in Latin America.”
(2002:149)
On the whole, Pentecostals have become more engaged in political matters than usual.
Pentecostal political theology moves firstly from rebuilding the bruised self-perception of the
individual to secondly, empowering him with new hope and confidence to thirdly assisting him
to garner the rich promises of the Gospel and fourthly, enabling him to reclaim, redeem and
liberate the land. In recent times, the brethren have mobilized to gain access into formal political
offices because ‘where the righteous rule, the people rejoice’. In Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Malawi
and Zambia, the Intercessors for Africa have been engaged in the recent changes in the political
processes. The intervention of the Intercessors in the human tragedy following the wars in
Liberia and Sierra-Leone is notable and a further sign of a new trend in politics of engagement. It
is the declared responsibility of the born again to liberate their nations and continent through
prayers. Intercession becomes a form of political praxis reshaping the religious and political
landscapes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Pentecostal movement in Africa emerged historically from the revivals
that indicate indigenous appropriation and “setting to work” of the translated gospel and
missionary message. Its shape changed in every decade from the 1970s to the present: the
puritanical temper and evangelical thrust of the early 1970s gave way to a more extensive
contact with American evangelists in the 1980s, intensive use of the media and advertisement
23
strategies and the prosperity gospel. In the 1990s, there was a reversal to holiness ethics, the
prophetic/apostolic theological emphases, intense growth and expansion into other parts of
Africa. Since then, the literature of the movement has changed as indigenous pastors write their
books, build large ministries and assert their independence. The level of participation in national
politics and social development projects has increased but new problems have arisen connected
with ministerial formation and the trauma of growth.
From a cultural perspective, just as the primal societies wove covenants and
encapsulating strategies to maintain cosmic order, Pentecostals essay to reshape the covenants,
worldview, social control model and individual life journeys and goals so that individuals and
communities will have a better life. They reshape the community’s sense of order. These
strategies could be illustrated with cultural ingredients from domestic and social domains, arts
and aesthetics, religious life and public space and especially with communication—the use of
symbols, speech and media to construct a new reality. The vibrancy and efficacy of the
combined force of these strategies have given the new movement a high profile in the religious
and public spaces. The linkages with Asia and the West enable the acquisition of external
cultural resources to create an emergent culture. The genius of the movement lies in the degree
of cultural creativity in appropriating, gestating and reconstructing the extravenous with fresh
imagination and energy. From the instrumentalist perspective, Pentecostalism is important for
understanding how Africans have responded to the rapid and untoward changes in their sociopolitical and economic environment. It has reproduced a political theology of engagement
through intercession for Africa. With vibrant evangelistic strategies, they re-evangelize the
continent. Criticisms of their methods abound but the matter of false prophets has always
24
bedeviled the Christian enterprise. The wheat and the tares must perforce grow together. The
achievement of Pentecostals lies in their innovative responses to the challenges embedded in the
African map of the universe.
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